Since today felt like the sun had landed in my back yard and shone solely for the sake of my sweat  glands, I didn’t feel much like making dinner this evening. My husband, being the utilitarian type, announced he planned on living off popsicles anyways, so my food preparation boycott didn’t bother him in the least.

“You know, now you see why I buy those frozen burritos for myself when I’m at the grocery store.” he says.

It’s true. I do see why. I just happen to hate them, myself. I figured if worse came to worse, I’d eat some cold cereal, or maybe just drink a lot of water until the heat started to fade, and make myself something to eat later.

Realizing it had been a few days since I cleared out the mailbox, I decided to throw on some flip flops and brave the sun drenched afternoon to fetch the mail. Its not really that long of a walk, but I catch a freckle after being in the shade on a sunny day in about five minutes. Walking to the mail box I usually throw on a long sleeve shirt and just deal with the heat, because I sneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comeriously could get sun burnt in a tank top.

But I digress.

The mailbox was jam packed with goodies. My threadless tee from the 12 club came, there was a mish mosh of bills, ad flyers, coupons and a tiny little cardboard box. My Soyjoy snack bars FINALLY came in the mail. I ordered them like.. oh.. 3 months ago?

Into the house I went. I opened the box and dove into the bars. Apple, raisin almond and coconut mango. I chose apple.

I ripped open the package and was caught a little off guard by the sight of it. It was a little square bar of… baked good. The smell was delicious, so I took a bite.

I don’t think I’d choose to call it a baked good. Maybe a baked Bad. I gave it to my husband. He immediately says.. “you know what this reminds me of?”

I stare blankly.

“MRE’s”

And at that moment I knew what had to be done. This post is not about soyjoy snack bars. Its a post about my first MRE.

Aaron’s brother is a reservist, and I think last year for Christmas, he had all the males in the family stick their hands into a giant box and pick out a “present”

Of course, they ended up with MRE’s. It was kinda funny, because they were all SO happy. It was like they had been given the best present ever, which is neat, because from that point on, I knew I could give everyone food for presents, and they’d be happy little campers about it.

I think originally Aaron ended up with another one, but he quickly swapped for this one, because he thought there might be a chance that in the future, I might want to try it. I guess he was right.

I took the MRE down from its hiding spot, above the medicine cabinet, inside the fondue pot. I figured in case of a zombie apocalypse, I should keep it near the bandaids.. You know, because you can never plan too well for those things.

I opened the pouch. (for future reference, do not attempt to open pouch with your teeth.)
With a knife.

I was greeted by a wide selection of brown tubes, pouches, boxes and packets.

A rundown of what you see here-

Cheese tortellini in tomato sauce, spoon, Spiced pound cake, Iodized salt and salt free seasoning packet. Charms candy, clorets mint chewing gum. Iced tea with lemon drink powder, Spiced cider, spiced apples, Peanut butter, crackers, Moist towelette, toilet paper, matches. There was also a heating pouch, but Aaron was busy getting it ready when I took this photo.

The Nutritional information on these puppies was amazing-

Not too bad, you know.. except for the SODIUM CONTENT. Holy crap.

So,I uess the way it works, is you put the heating packet in water, and then put the heating packet and the food packet into the big heavy duty pouch that the whole mess came in. When Aaron did this, we both were surprised with how hot that little thing got. Seriously? I tried to get a photo of the steam, but my camera didn’t wanna play. it was amazing though. Our pasta was hot in a matter of minutes. We also warmed up the spiced apples, and then warmed up water for our apple cider.

While Aaron was preparing all this, I got down to business with the Peanut butter and the crackers-

If you haven’t had MRE crackers before, just imagine like.. three slices of white bread, smashed and dried. That’s what one of these crackers is like. They’re really good, but they suck all the moisture out of your body. The peanut butter is really good too, but… well, you’ll be licking the roof of your mouth for a good half an hour after eating it.

The heating phase of dinner was complete, and.. well..

Pouch time.

We figured we’d go authentic, and only use the tools that came with the meal to present the meal. Considering the only tool that came along with the mess was a spoon.. well, this is what you get-

Cheese tortellini with tomato sauce-

Spiced apples over spiced pound cake-

The entire meal, plus the lemon flavoured iced tea beverage that I prepared. Aaron made and then quickly consumed the spiced cider pouch after he had a bout with the peanut butter crackers. hehe..

Overall, I was pretty impressed. If it wasn’t for the sodium content, I might be persuaded to eat this same thing again. The pasta was fairly fresh tasting, and not overly.. well it tasted good, and not really like canned pasta sauce, which is weird. The tortellini could have been improved upon, but I mean.. It came from a pouch, what should I expect?

The Spiced apples had some crunch on them, and didn’t feel weird or have a funky aftertaste to them. The spiced pound cake was really good, if only a little dry. But then again.. It came in a pouch.

So, I guess my MRE experience wasn’t too bad. If I was stuck in the desert, or in a forest, or somewhere where regular food wasn’t available, I’d definately enjoy this. I didn’t eat more than about a third of the whole thing, and I’m STUFFED. Sure, after I was done, I drank about a gallon of water, but that’s what canteens are for, right?

I’m thinking I’ll have to find a way to get my brother in law to donate more to us.. you know.. since I’ve depleted my emergency rations for the zombie apocalypse and all.

OH yeah, and I gotta say, great thinking, including a wad of toilet paper with the meal. Definately thinking ahead, the MRE packagers are. Definately on top of things.

Also, I’d just like to note, Its been about an hour since we ate this, and I don’t even have heart burn. heh. simply amazing.

-A.

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